


10.31.17

by jugandbettsdetectiveagency



Series: halloween prompts [2]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, F/M, Ghosts, Halloween Tumblr Prompt, Major character death - Freeform, There's some resolve in the end I couldn't not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 16:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12461925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugandbettsdetectiveagency/pseuds/jugandbettsdetectiveagency
Summary: On that night, when the veil is at its thinnest, he finds his way home.





	10.31.17

_On that night, when the veil is at its thinnest, he finds his way home._

~

She sees it in the way the neon light from Pop’s reflects in the puddle at her feet, turning it a vibrant shade of red. It ripples on the autumn winds, sending out concentric circles towards her toes.

~

_“Juggie, please! Please, don’t go out there,” Betty whispered frantically, eyes wide and shining in the white lights the emergency generator had turned on when it kicked into action. The desperation she felt in that moment, willing him to stay still beside her, crouched under the table of their booth at Pop’s, was so strong she could feel it manifesting in her throat, a lump lodging itself in her airways and cutting off her oxygen supply._

_The apples of his cheeks were burning beneath her clammy palms, flush with exertion and anger. She grasped at his face, a little too hard she thought, her nails leaving white trails in his skin that disappear as fast as she could make them._

_“It’s gonna be alright, Betts. I’ll be right back, okay? Right back,” he soothed, smoothing her hair back, sweaty fly-aways getting tangled between his barely trembling fingers._

_“No. No, no,” she whimpered, eyes sliding shut as the tears falling down her cheeks decided his fate before it had even played out. Jughead pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead, cupping the back of her neck delicately to hold her against his lips._

_“I’ll be back. Stay here, don’t move – I love you.” With that he was gone._

~

Jughead had always kept his promises to her. It didn’t matter how long it took, or how many obstacles had to be overcome, without fail they’d arrive at the destination he’d promised they would.

He’d promised Betty he’d find a way out of the Serpents’ game, getting sucked too far under before he’d even noticed his feet were sinking. Jughead pleaded with her to give him time, time to wriggle free from their ever-tightening coils, one limb at a time, before she gave up all hope.

She’d remember the tantrum she’d thrown, hurling cruel insults she couldn’t even remember thinking, let alone feeling, one after another. She wanted to hurt him the way he was consuming her, fogging over her every thought and igniting a searing pain inside her chest as she watched him fall further under the dark spell spreading over Riverdale.

He’d kept his promise; he’d paid with his life.

~

_Betty couldn’t stop the strangled sob that ripped its way out of her chest at the sound of a gunshot echoing through the parking lot, reverberating through her skull. The wail was swallowed in the roar of retreating engines, stomach lurching with dry heaves that left acid burning Betty’s tongue._

_She couldn’t move._

_Frozen and useless, she heard each tick of the oversized clock behind the counter counting down the seconds he had left. Her joints were locked and her muscles burned but she couldn’t get the sound of the shot to stop ringing in her ears._

_In the next instant Betty lurched from under the booth, bursting through the door of the diner with such violence it almost comically contrasted the delicate tinkle of the bell that chimed in the same second. There was a dark mass contorted on the floor, shuddering gently like it’s caught on the wings of the breeze, engulfing itself in a rapidly expanding pool of dark liquid – it’s not Jughead._

_It couldn’t be Jughead, it didn’t resemble him at all. The crumpled figure was weak and pale, not the tall strong boy with olive skin and soft curls; the brave, lonely boy who’d climbed through her window and kissed her for the first time; the man he’d become over the next year, growing up too quickly to keep in step with the rest of his peers._

_Betty knelt down by the body – not Jughead, it wasn’t Jughead – and pressed her hands over his, turning her ashen skin red. She could feel the blood creeping up her knees, seeping into her jeans with a sticky, unnatural warmth as it marked her a murderer._

_She wanted to tell him she loved him – it would be the last time, she knew. But her tongue felt heavy, lips numb, and she could only watch as the gurgled breaths of the boy she couldn’t live without died without her._

_Betty spent the next year telling herself she was angry at Jughead for ignoring her pleas. But, for the first time, she was angry at herself for making him keep his promises._

~

Halloween, a year later to the day, is the first time Betty sees him again.

She doesn’t remember feeling any fear as he waits for her at the other end of Pop’s parking lot. Betty was so used to seeing a flash of dark hair everywhere she goes, the soft knit of a grey sweater, the graceful hunch of broad shoulders that only comes with trying to dissolve into the crowd, that it doesn’t even register to be scared that this is no momentary hallucination.

“Took you long enough,” she whispers, lips barely moving, surprised the sound even permeates the fall chill at all. He laughs like he can’t help himself, scuffing his sneaker against the gravel as he casts his eyes bashfully downwards.

“Can’t you feel it?” he asks as she takes steady, unhesitant steps towards him, perfectly measured in pace. “In the air?” She stills to try and feel what he’s saying. There’s a strange static working at the tips of her fingers, raising the downy hairs on her arms, like the electric just before a big, summer storm. The air feels thinner and her body feels lighter as Betty makes her way through the veil of atmosphere surrounding them.

 

“Are you real?” she murmurs when she’s a hairs breadth away, letting her hand hover in the space between them.

“Yes and no,” he replies cryptically, arching one eyebrow challengingly, in that way he always used it, and it’s this action that has her eyes stinging, knees shaking.

“What does that even mean?” she asks in exasperation, practically rolling her eyes with her words alone and he laughs again, not quite like she remembers, but not all that different either.

“I’m here,” he affirms, and Betty doesn’t realise how long she’s been desperate to hear those words once again leave his lips. She reaches for him, a sickening coldness burying itself in her bones as her hand glides right through his chest. “But I’m not _that_ here, either,” Jughead laments, the corners of his eyes turned down as he watches her heart break through the transparent windows in her eyes.

It’s too much, to have him before her but not within reach, and not enough all at once. So Betty decides to embrace the average and it is just enough.

~

The next year she tells him his killer has been sentenced to death. It won’t take place on Halloween so he won’t be able to see it happen, but she followed the trial with an attention rapt enough for the both of them.

Jughead wishes he could hold her as she cries but he’d have to make do with the memory of her sloping curves in his arms instead. She thought it would feel like justice had been served, like some clichéd sense of tragic romance closure. But he’s still dead and she’s still broken three hundred and sixty four days of the year. Jughead makes a joke about leap years and she snorts ungracefully in response. It’s the closest thing to a laugh she can remember escaping her in a long time.

Betty looks at him as much as her eyes will allow while he’s with her, no matter how hard her heavy lids try and betray her, stealing precious seconds from her solitary day of happiness. He’s curled up at the foot of her bed, lanky limbs halted mid growth spurt, disobedient curls falling across his eyes ( _“beanies don’t come with you to the afterlife, who’d have known”_ ). A long forgotten ache rears up in the pit of her stomach, and it’s been so long that she almost mistakes her lust for the all-consuming sadness she’s become so accustomed to.

But the time she’d had to touch him had been fleeting, teasing, and she squashes the sensation down, resigned to feel unsatisfied for the rest of her life.

~

Her new college friends give her a strange look when she says she going home for Halloween, wondering why she’d want to spend one of the best (and most promiscuous) holidays back in her small hometown, staying with her parents no less. Betty gives them a practiced smile and a delicate shrug, cementing the good girl image her young, teenaged-self had sworn she’d shed one day. It doesn’t feel important anymore.

She feels panic bubbling up in her throat, threatening to overspill in the form of her hastily eaten breakfast sandwich, when Jughead is nowhere to be found at Pop’s. She really had been going mad these past few years after all.

Her head spins as she begins a frantic search, eventually calming down enough to find herself pulling up in front of Sunnyside trailer park.

Jughead is leaning against the wire fencing, the autumnal sunlight making him look even more translucent than usual. She takes her place by his side, keeping a careful inch between them, hating the feeling that accompanies the accidental brushing of her body against his form.

“What are you doing here, Betty?” he sighs, not taking his eyes from where his father is digging out the weeds surrounding his trailer, with a vigour only befitting a man still grieving.

“What do you mean?” she asks, feigning confusion. In truth, his question stings but she knows why he asks it all the same.

“You shouldn’t be clinging to something that’s no longer here. It’s your first year of college; you should be out having fun with your new friends,” Jughead slides his eyes towards her, a hint of accusation invading his tone. She lifts her chin an inch higher in defiance, barely noticing the way this familiar action causes the corners of his mouth to tick up, despite the lines of worry still creasing his forehead.

“This is my one day, Jughead Jones, and you will not make me give it up,” she grinds out with all the ferocity of an upset kitten that’s been disturbed from its spot sleeping in the sun. He doesn’t push her any further, because even in death he’s still selfish when it comes to Betty Cooper’s time and attention.

“Who would have thought that all it would take for my dad to get dry would be my death,” he jokes wryly, watching as FP straightens to wipe a combination of two types of salt-tainted water from his face.

“Juggie,” Betty chastises, unamused by his attempt at humour.

“I’m sorry,” he apologises immediately, not wanting to be the cause of even more unhappiness for her. He’s already watched the sun inside her eyes start to burn itself out, catching itself with a tiny flame of hope just before it was extinguished for good. “I just thought he’d get worse after… It’s good to see him on the straight and narrow. I thought that maybe– ” Jughead catches himself before he finishes that thought, his eyes darting guiltily to meet hers before he turns away. He doesn’t have to say it. If FP had drank himself into a grieving stupor it may have hurried things along a little bit. He swore he should have been sucked right to hell when the thought first crept its way into his head, invading his mind like the sharp, unwelcome barbs on spider’s legs, sending a deathly shudder down his spine. He’s aware of the irony.

Betty closes the gap between them, gritting her teeth against the unpleasant sensation every time her arm brushes his. She hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking that loneliness could work both ways.

~

“I can’t do it, Jughead.”

She’d said it a year earlier, too, and now here they are again. If someone had told him that he’d be arguing with his girlfriend even in death Jughead would have probably scoffed and then said he could see where they were coming from. She was stubborn, impossibly, intoxicatingly so.

He just wanted her to start living again.

“Betts.” She still shivers when he calls her that. “It’s been years now,” he whispers, almost as if he’s trying not to remind her even while saying the words out loud. “All through college you never… You need to move on.” He can’t meet her eyes.

“Well how can I when I just know you’re going to keep coming back, year after year? You’ll never leave me alone!” she explodes, clamping a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with horror, the minute the words slip past her loosened lips. He’d just made her so _mad_.

The year before he’d asked her to go on a date, just one, for him. That was a low blow. She’d be forever in debt for the sacrifice he’d made for her, giving himself over (quite literally) at her request. Betty had faked a phone call to step outside of the restaurant when she’d caught curious blue eyes peering in through the glass-fronted wall. If she turned around now she could probably just about make out her date at their table, nervously twisting his hands as he wonders whether he was doing okay on this first date with the pretty blonde girl who worked at the register across the street.

Jealousy burns, hot and betraying, in Jughead’s stomach as he catches sight of the man, older than he’d ever be.

“You’re right,” Jughead replies meekly after a painful minute has dragged by. “I have to leave you to live your life.” He’d do anything to look into those crystal green eyes one last time, up close, but he knows that if he does he’d crumple – instead he keeps them fixed on the pavement, staring at her sensible, blush pink flats.

“Juggie, no,” she cries, tears making her voice thick. “I love you.” It’s what she should have said as he was sucking in his last breath on that night, a lifetime ago (at least it was for him, it didn’t have to be for her), but only now does she find her voice. Jughead’s heart shatters.

“I loved you, too,” he replies carefully, putting all his stock in the past tense to keep her rooted to the sidewalk as he turns and walks away. Forever.

~

He knows it’s childish but he can’t resist stealing the white sheet hanging from Mrs Mayweather’s clothes line in her backyard. He’ll get a kick out of seeing her wonder how it managed to disappear and then return with two small holes cut in it.

He’d kept his promise, he’d stayed away – he always kept his promises.

Jughead stands across the street, so close and yet an entire world away, as Betty guides the little girl with golden curls up to the next door, pressing the bell and then helping with the joyous chorus of _“trick or treat!”_ when their call is answered.

He thinks that in another life those curls would be dark, and her nose would be a little less button shaped, but she’d still have her mother’s crystalline eyes and high cheekbones.

When they head back towards the street, the girl’s bag a little bit heavier with candy, Betty’s eyes pass over him as if he wasn’t there, under his ridiculous sheet, with even more ridiculous holes cut out for the eyes – as if he were a ghost.

The man from the restaurant all those years ago meets them by the fence, lifting the girl into his arms and delighting in her happy squeal. He offers to carry her candy bag for her and then throws his head back in laughter as she clings to it like her life depended on it, suspicion painting her cherubim features. Betty laughs too, stroking her hair fondly, but it’s different to the one Jughead remembers.

Everything about the way Betty is… it’s all different to how he remembers. The way her eyes soften into a different shape when the man places his hand on her lower back, drawing her to him. The way her lips part in a different fashion as he leans towards her for a swift peck… None of it is the same as it used to be. The way it used to be with him; he likes to think she’s stored those memories away in a chest in the back of her mind, to pull out and flick through with a kind of melancholy that no longer tears you apart, which makes you feel sad in a good way, when the mood is right.

Jughead’s still noting the differences as they walk down the rest of the block and vanish around the corner.

~

_Betty doesn’t remember the lights in Pop’s ever being this bright before. Perhaps the old man had finally revamped his beloved diner. Betty chuckles to herself as even the thought feels like a betrayal._

_“Hey, you.” Her heart stops at the low voice that floats towards her across the limitless expanse, not quite settling into the diner of her fondest memories, not quite nothing at all._

_“Juggie?” she whispers, scared to break the spell that’s brought her back to him._

_“I got your favourite – strawberry shake with extra whipped cream. I might have eaten the strawberry while I was waiting for you, though,” he tells her sheepishly, a light blush resting on his sharp cheekbones._

_“That’s okay,” she breathes, tripping her way towards him. As she reaches out a hand to steady herself on the booth she notices it’s missing the familiar wrinkles and darkened spots that belayed her age. She fishes a tendril out of her ponytail to see that it’s blonde, not grey like it has been for so many years now. There’s no persistent ache in her joints, no tell-tale cramp of arthritis in her hands. She can’t remember what it’s like to feel this_ young _._

_“I’ve missed you, Betty, so much,” Jughead continues, standing in front of her now. When she lifts a hand it lands solidly on his chest. Without warning a flood of tears cascade down her youthfully flushed cheeks. “I hope you had a good life,” he says, his own voice wobbling with barely contained emotion. His eyes are as blue as she remembers._

_It’s not another second before she’s got her face buried in the crook of his neck, his warm hand cradling the back of hers, breathing in the scent of him she’d never forgotten while he litters her hair, her temples, anywhere he can reach, with desperate kisses._

_“I did, I did,” she promises, clutching at him, determined to never let him escape her again._

_“Time for round two,” he murmurs into her hairline, and it’s already damp with his tears. “It’s been a long time coming.”_

_“I’d wait forever.”_


End file.
